Commission Changes & Last Delivery Dates

Waterstones is always a popular place to go and shop for books, and with Christmas just around the corner, shoppers are flocking to get their last minute gifts from there. Please note that their last delivery date will be the 18th December for 2nd class and the 20th December for 1st class postage.

As well as this, we do have some changes happening to the program. Please see the below:
The first change we will be making is introducing New & Existing commission groups. We are hoping to have this live for Monday 18th December so please take this as the notice this will be happening. For reference an existing customer is one who has shopped within the last year, so a customer who shops just once very 12 months will be classed as a new customer.

We will be initially setting the commissions at 4% for new customers and 1% for existing customers due to go live 18th December. We will inform you when it is switched live.

We have taken this decision so Waterstones are inline with a lot of other major high street retailers and also to allow us to understand the customers coming in via the affiliate channel and drive more incremental sales for Waterstones.

Product Level Tracking and Non Commissionable Sales

Secondly we will be introducing product level tracking. Again this will allow us to better understand the sales coming via the affiliate channel and allow for a more flexible commission structure around products and product categories. This will mean that some exclusive and limited edition books we may be paying 0% on whereas others we can increase.

We will notify all affiliates of any titles that are going to be set at 0% commission so you are aware before promoting them. 

Again we are looking to put this live from 18th December 

Cookie Period 

After reviewing the customer purchase journey we have decided to lower the cookie period from 30 days to 14 days as we feel this period is long enough for the customer to have visited the site and made the purchase decision. 

We will be putting this live as of 18th December.

We appreciate there are a few changes here but we are making them in order to sustain a more robust affiliate program that has a focus on incrementality and better suits Waterstones needs. 

We do value or affiliate partnerships so if you do have any issues, concerns or questions then feel free to get in touch.

Thanks

Chris & The Waterstones Team